The Blue Cross Story

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is the biggest private well being insurance method in the United States (such as Puerto Rico) and Canada. It is sacramentoseoservices.com composed of 55 independent, locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans that collectively provided health care coverage to over 88 million people in 2003.

For its beginnings we need to go back to 1929 to a man namedJustin Ford Kimball when he became vice president of Baylor University in Dallas, Texas. He was an skilled administrator, as he headed the College of Medicine, School of Nursing, College of Dentistry, and the university hospital.

Soon after taking the job, he developed a well being plan that guaranteed teachers 21 days of hospital care for 50 cents amonth. The plan soon spread to other employee groups in Dallas, and then comparable plans began to crop up nation-wide.

Meanwhile, about the same time that Kimball was producing his plan, the Blue Shield idea was becoming well-known in the lumber and mining camps of the Pacific Northwest. Critical injuries and chronic illness had been common amongst these workers who were in extremely hazardous and dangerous jobs.

Their employers saw the need to have to supply medical care for them and they arranged with physicians to spend them a monthly fee to take care of the medical requirements of the workers. These programs would later grow to be what is identified as the Blue Shield Plans.

As for the cross symbol, it was very first utilized in a 1934 advertisement for the Hospital Service Association, which later became identified as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.

Joseph Binder, a Viennese artist, was hired by Firm secretary E.A. van Steenwyk to produce a poster that included a blue Greek cross. Van Steenwyk used the symbol to determine his company's well being plans and then Blue Cross began to use it in other parts of the country.

In 1939, the American Hospital Association, which was based in Chicago, began to use the Blue Cross symbol to indicate that health plans about the country met particular standards.

The AHA continued to use the symbol until 1960 when the Blue Cross Association was founded. The two organizations remained affiliated until 1972.

The shield symbol was designed in Buffalo, New York by Carl Metzger in 1939 and the very first official Blue Shield strategy was founded in California that same year. Carl Metzger was an early pioneer in the Blue movement and he wanted a style that would distinguish the new medical service strategy.

It soon garagedoorrepairinalvin.com flourished as the number of Blue Shield Plans kept on growing. In 1948 the symbol was informally adopted by nine plans referred to as the Linked Medical Care Plan, which was later renamed the National Association of Blue Shield Plans.

More than the years, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield healthcare insurance ideas took hold. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association was reversemortgage360.com formed in 1982 by a merger of the Blue Cross Association and the National Association of Blue Shield Plans. When the Blue Cross and Blue Shield organizations merged, their brand symbols also merged and became one of the most familiar symbols in America.

To show you how big it has turn into, in 2003, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association took in $182.7 billion in income. The evolution of managed wellness care in the United States is intimately linked to the styles of Blue Cross-Blue Shield.